Law has freed gays, now society has to

"Happy to be gay" is something homosexuals often said as they joked amongst themselves and tried to lift up each other’s spirits. Now they can qualify that further and cheer: "Happy and free to be gay."

The Delhi high court’s landmark judgement decriminalizing homosexuality by striking down section 377 of the IPC, a law that could punish gay couples even if they were adult and consenting, has in one stroke turned India’s medieval stand on sexual freedom to something modern and in keeping with many forward looking liberal nations.

Though this would still not mean the baton-wielding havaldar hounding out gay couples in parks and parking lots will suddenly turn all nice and sweet, and will not harass them for Rs 50, it is a tectonic shift as far as the movement of homosexuals, bi-sexuals and transgenders for equal rights in India is concerned.

Even if it’s come late, the law has done what it rightly had to because, apart from the compelling argument for free will, even science says homosexuality could be more a matter of mental constitution than physical deviance. So there we are.

But the pressing issue that we now face, really, is how much of a change in attitude society – the heterosexual majority – will show towards a minority that has been persecuted by all sections, all classes, all religions, castes, faiths and political persuasions.

For, one may not anymore have to live under the fear of being dragged to a police station, to be beaten, abused and humiliated by cops, or face certain punishment if prosecuted, but one will still have to agonize about what the parents, siblings, neighbourhood aunties and uncles, friends and peers would say if someone decided to `come out’. The real freedom would eventually rest there – an acceptance by society. Because in all cultures, there is a law of the land and there is a more private, more insidious law of the people. It is this that shackles and fetters all those who are perceived to be different, followers not of the norm but aberration.

In India, as in so many Asian countries which are far behind Western nations in their approval and acceptance of homosexuality, parents marry off their sons and daughters to people of the opposite sex knowing fully well that their children won’t be happy, acutely aware that they will remain suffocated and trapped in an institution that will kill them a little every day.

Countless families continue to "treat" homosexuality, if not as a disease of the body than of the mind. They will take them to doctors, vaids, magicians, Bangali Babas, gurus, priests, maulvis and exorcists in the hope that the devil of homosexuality will either be medicated out or beaten away. If "treatment" fails, they try emotional blackmail. When that fails they try to hide it from the public eye. If that too fails they strike a deal that says their gay children can do what they want privately but publicly they should be seen as "normal" and married. When all else fails, there is the punishment of excommunication and banishment. Few, very few, will be at peace, confident and bold enough to give this real freedom to gay family members. Only a minuscule lot will be able to tell society that their children, kin, friends are gay and that they are okay with it.

More than the law, it is society has to give freedom to homosexuals. This is what we have to strive for from here on. And though that will take quite some time in coming, there is a new dawn waiting at the horizon for gays.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Everyone needs one for the road - sometimes it's a prayer, other times it's a pal. Often we get it, often we don't. But as the road itself is changing, morphing and metamorphosing, how is young India travelling it, what are they thinking, feeling, battling, achieving, letting go and holding on to? This blog by Anand Soondas, senior editor. The Times of India, talks about people and it has people talk. people like us.

Everyone needs one for the road - sometimes it's a prayer, other times it's a pal. Often we get it, often we don't. But as the road itself is changing, morp. . .